“It came up for sale – it was in receivership – and I felt it was a good price," he told The Australian Financial Review.

Mr Knappick, who made his fortune from his shareholding in coal company Felix Resources, recently bought a duplex apartment building called Watermark in Wategos at Byron Bay for a price believed to be about $9 million.

Mr Knappick followed his fellow Felix executives Brian Flannery and Travers Duncan into the coal technology company White Energy, but has since spent a lot of time building a property portfolio with almost $60 million invested in mostly rural land holdings.

He owns well over 100,000 macadamia trees in Queensland and northern NSW and has accumulated about 1000 hectares.

“This property is run down and I will fix it up and hopefully make a bob out of it," Mr Knappick said.

Wilsons Pocket macadamia farm was one of two such farms in the hands of receivers. Both were once owned by state Labor politician Ken Haywood, who sold them to a now failed subsidiary of Nexis Holdings. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia took possession of the properties and appointed receivers McGrath Nicol.

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The second property, called Peachester Farms at Mount Beerwah in the Glass House Mountains, is for sale with Ray White Rural’s Jez McNamara. The 240-hectare property has 55,000 macadamia trees ranging from three years to 20 years old. The property, about one hour’s drive from Brisbane, has a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house and related farm infrastructure.

Companies such as the newly-created FarmCorp, which wants to build its fund to $50 million, are expected to be eyeing such offerings.